crunch
UK/kɹʌnt͡ʃ/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
Australia/kɹɐnt͡ʃ/
crunch verb: to crush something, especially food, with a noisy crackling sound.
Verb
crunch (third-person singular simple present crunches, present participle crunching, simple past and past participle crunched)
- To crush something, especially food, with a noisy crackling sound.
- When I came home, Susan was watching TV with her feet up on the couch, crunching a piece of celery.
- And their white tusks crunch'd o'er the whiter skull,1816, Lord Byron, The Siege of Corinth
- To be crushed with a noisy crackling sound.
- Beetles crunched beneath the men's heavy boots as they worked.
- To calculate or otherwise process (e.g. to crunch numbers: to perform mathematical calculations). Presumably from the sound made by mechanical calculators.
- That metadata makes it much easier for the search engine to crunch the data for queries.
- To grind or press with violence and noise.
- The sound of our vessel crunching her way through the new ice is not easy to be described.1854, E.K. Kane, “The United States Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin: a personal Narrative”, in The Living Age, page 517
- The departure was not unduly prolonged.[…]Within the door Mrs. Spoker hastily imparted to Mrs. Love a few final sentiments on the subject of Divine Intention in the disposition of buckets; farewells and last commiserations; a deep, guttural instigation to the horse; and the wheels of the waggonette...1921, Ben Travers, chapter 5, in A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925, →OCLC
- To emit a grinding or crunching noise.
- There were sounds in the air above his head – sounds of the crunching and rattling of the loose, smooth stones as his neighbors moved about[…]1849, Henry James, Confidence
- To cause the gears to emit a crunching sound by releasing the clutch before the gears are properly synchronised.
- To compress (data) using a particular algorithm, so that it can be restored by decrunching.
- PackIt will not crunch executables, unless told to do so.1993, Michael Barsoom, “[comp.sys.amiga.announce] PackIt Announcement”, in comp.archives (Usenet)
- To make employees work overtime in order to meet a deadline in the development of a project.
Noun
crunch (plural crunches)
- Crunchiness.
- I like the crunch of those crackers.
- A small piece created by crushing; a piece of material with a friable or crunchy texture.
- Smear the peanut butter, fluff, and a bit of the nutella all over, even to the very edge of the wrap. Sprinkle the crunches on top and then start rolling from one of the non-trimmed edges2014 December 18, “Fluffernutter and Nutella Yule Log”, in The Lovely Crazy
- A dessert consisting of a crunchy topping with fruit underneath.
- A critical moment or event.
- It always pains me (slightly) when a flaming young radical like Neil Miller turns out when the crunch comes to be such an ardent defender of the status quo.1976 August 21, A. Nolder Gay, “Another View”, in Gay Community News, volume 4, number 8, page 4
- The friends, on the contrary, argue that Job does not "know", that only God knows; yet, when it comes to the crunch, they themselves seem to know as much as God knows: for example, that Job is a guilty sinner.1985, John C. L. Gibson, Job, page 237
- A problem that leads to a crisis.
- The crunch is characterized by extremely depressed liquidity and deteriorated balance sheet positions for households, corporations, and financial institutions[…]1994, Martin H. Wolfson, Financial Crises: Understanding the Postwar U.S. Experience, page 22
- The overtime work required to catch up and finish a project, usually in the final weeks of development before release.
- A shortage.
- But a supply crunch, which is already affecting the drive, could slow it down further.2021 April 22, “Covid: India sets global record for new cases amid oxygen shortage”, in BBC News
- A form of abdominal exercise, based on a sit-up but in which the lower back remains in contact with the floor.
- But even I draw the line at “doing crunches” in designer clothes. Fashion sneakers are for swanking around the shops, not for running in. And so, like everyone else, I wear grotty old tracksuits earmarked for Oxfam, and tragic free festival T-shirts that give away my age.2017 November 16, Jo Ellison, “Help: the gym has turned us into slobs”, in Financial Times
- The symbol #.
- Moderate distortion.
crunch meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Telugu
crunch in Hindi
- क्रंचिंग करना
crunch in Urdu
- چر مراہٹ, چبانا, چر مر کرنا
crunch in Bengali
- ক্রাঞ্চ করা
crunch in Telugu
- క్రంచ్, క్రంచ్ చెయ్యడానికి
More languagesFewer languages
- crunch in Malayalam
- കൊറിക്കുക koṟikkuka
- crunch in Kannada
- ಜಗಿ, ಅಗಿ
- crunch in Nepali
- क्रन्च गर्न, क्रंच गर्न, क्रान्च गर्न
- crunch in Arabic
- جَرَشَ jaraša, قَرْمَشَة qarmaša
Examples of crunch in a sentence
- Before you buy a car, spend some time crunching numbers and make sure you can afford it.
- "I bet the green car will make it unscathed!" said Mildred. Suddenly, there came a loud crunch from the racetrack. "Or not," she sighed.
- The crunch! - which has that addictive crumb full of the everything-everywhere-all-at-once seasoning.
Synonyms of crunch
Forms of crunch
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | crunches |
| present participle | crunching |
| past participle | crunched |
| past | crunched |
| Noun | |
| plural | crunches |
Origin of crunch
From earlier craunch, cranch, of imitative origin.
Words formed from crunch
Phrases with crunch
Words that rhyme with crunch
Questions about crunch
- What does crunch mean?
- Crunch means to crush something, especially food, with a noisy crackling sound.
- What is crunch in Hindi?
- Crunch in Hindi is क्रंचिंग करना. See Crunch meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is crunch?
- Crunch can be a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce crunch?
- Crunch is pronounced /kɹʌnt͡ʃ/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of crunch?
- The past tense of crunch is crunched.
Words near crunch in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: crunch (page history and authors); crunch (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); crunch (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); crunch (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); crunch (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); crunch (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); crunch (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-crunch.ogg.
Cite this entry: “crunch.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/crunch. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.